Do you feel like you are sleepwalking into yet another banking disaster? Tomorrow's stress tests are likely to result in you and me lumbered with another €20bn bill for Ireland's dysfunctional banks. Why? Will this make a jot of difference to the economy? Is there a cheaper way of doing this? Why do we have to pay anyway? The banks are bust and yes, they can be made solvent by throwing billions of our euros at them, but to what end? To fatten them up for sale so someone else -- some investor -- gets all the upside?

Remember NAMA was supposed to "get credit flowing"? Now we know it is a fee fest for the same auctioneers, accountants and lawyers whose fingerprints were all over the collapse of the economy, the property market and the banks in the first place. They got paid enormous sums in the boom and now they are getting paid enormous sums in the bust and they are being paid with your money. NAMA hasn't gone away you know!

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